"The United States' global trade representative has strongly criticised a perceived preference on the part of large Australian organisations for hosting their data on-shore in Australia, claiming it created a significant trade barrier for US technology firms and was based on a misinterpretation of the US Patriot Act." It is somewhat entertaining that Australian citizens are apparently more concerned about the crazy Patriot Act (the name alone is hurl-inducing) than US citizens are.

Maybe US citizens (and others) should/are choosing to host their data in Australia to avoid the Patriot Act.

Ok, so realistically Australia wouldn't be my first choice for some technical reasons, such as geographic location leading to high latency and not having direct links to countries the majority of my users are in.

Still, the US should learn to more seriously consider the implications to commerce of items designed to "protect".

As an individual, if I wanted excellent protection against sickness I should avoid all contact with living organisms and live in a cave. For starters, total isolation makes it hard to live (food). And, if per chance I did have contact with another human, I would almost certainly contract some common bacterial/viral infection and die from it. The irony here being that increased protection can result in increased risk from the very thing you are trying to guard against.

Fear drives many illogical, ineffective beahviours. And, although we may have nothing to fear but fear itself, I worry about the actions taken by others as a consequence of their fears.